‘Who are you?’ Adam said again, into the rain.

  The second beggar came up beside her companion. She was a young woman, maybe not yet eighteen, but the look she gave Adam was so pitiless it chilled him to the core of his soul.

  She pointed at Adam and said something. Adam did not recognise the language, but he guessed the meaning.

  Should we kill him, too?

  Adam felt weightless, as if his life sat in the pan of a scale that had not yet come into balance. As if everything he had done, or not done, was being judged.

  The beggar gave Adam a curious look, as if he, too, half-recognised something he could not name. He frowned, then shook his head. With a sigh, he took the girl’s hand and walked back down the hill. They both vanished into the rain.

  Adam wanted to follow. There was so much he needed to know: who they were and how they had come to be in that place; why Hugo had recognised them, and why they had killed him. But all his strength had been spent. Pain throbbed in his wounds as he sank to his knees. The rain soaked him to the skin until he shivered with cold. The cut in his side had started to clot, but he had lost a lot of blood. Perhaps he would die there with Hugo, their bodies lying together until the vultures picked the carcasses clean, and no one could tell one man’s bones from the other’s.

  ‘Adam?’

  The first time he heard the voice, he thought he had slipped into dreams. Or perhaps he had died, and this was the voice of his ancestors welcoming him.

  ‘Adam?’

  He opened his eyes. Now he was certain he had died, for he was looking into Panjit’s face, staring down at him with concern. He was still in the road, with Hugo’s body lying motionless a few feet away. How could Panjit have got there?

  Panjit pulled Adam to his feet. Over his shoulder, Adam saw that there was a small square building behind him with its door standing open. The water ideogram that he had searched out so often in the palace paving slabs was carved into the lintel above it.

  ‘You got away through the irrigation tunnels,’ Adam said in wonder.

  ‘After you and Hugo went through the window, I took advantage of the confusion to escape. I knew it was impossible to survive that fall – but I also knew that if any man could do it, it would be you.’

  ‘Did anyone follow you?’

  ‘There are many passages through the mountain.’ Panjit was still limping; Adam could not imagine how he had worked his way through the slippery, tortuous passages by himself. ‘It will take the Company soldiers weeks to find them all, especially without their leader.’ He nodded to Hugo’s body. ‘I see you had your revenge.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Adam thought about telling Panjit how it had happened, but it was so extraordinary he could not be sure he had dreamed it. There would be time to ponder it later.

  Panjit looked at the corpse and wrinkled his nose.

  ‘There will be others. The East India Company is like an enchanted serpent. Cut off one head and two more appear. We cannot save Holkar now.’

  He gave Adam his arm. Leaning on each other, the two wounded men hobbled their way down the road that led out of the city.

  ‘Our battle is over.’

  NATIVITY BAY

  M

  ary lay on the floor, still pinned by the roof beam. Her arms cradled her dead sister. Her eyes were closed.

  The beam was charred and scorching hot, but Paul’s hands did not feel it as he gripped it and heaved. Arms strengthened by years at sea lifted it off her and threw it aside. A huge section of roof that had been propped up by the beam collapsed in a blizzard of sparks and dust. Hot embers blew over him. His skin blistered; his clothes started to burn. Mary did not move. Paul grabbed her arms and pulled her free of the debris, out of the door into the courtyard. Only when she was safe did he drop and roll over, smacking himself frantically to put the fire out.

  The compound was deserted. Anyone who was not dead had fled the burning house, whose flames were licking high into the night. Paul lifted Mary and carried her in his arms, like a bridegroom with his bride, to the marula tree that grew in a corner of the yard. He laid her among its spreading roots, propped against the trunk as if she was dozing on a summer’s day. Her eyes were closed, her nightdress ghostly white. For a moment, it was possible to believe she was only asleep.

  Paul cupped his hand under her chin and lifted her head. Frustration at his muteness swelled inside him.

  I am sorry, he wanted to say. I tried to save you. I love you.

  Her eyes blinked open, though a grey film seemed to cover them like a layer of soot. Her strength was fading. Her golden hair had been burned off half her scalp; her flawless skin was blistered and mangled; blood and filth covered her body. Yet when Paul looked at her, the person he saw was the angel who had found him on the beach.

  ‘I love you,’ she whispered.

  Her eyes closed again. She put her hand on his heart, and Paul did the same. Through the thin fabric of her dress he felt the faint beat, slower and slower.

  At last her breathing stopped; her body slumped. Paul threw his arms around her. Her blood soaked his shirt; when he squeezed her tight, the burned skin on his hand screamed with pain. She was dead.

  A tug on his shoulder spun him away from his grief. If he had had a weapon, he would have buried it in her before he saw who it was.

  It was Sana. Her eyes burned in the firelight, and there was blood on her hands and arms that said she had not escaped the battle.

  ‘We must go.’

  Paul ignored her. He pointed to Mary, and the tears streaming down his cheeks spoke more than any words

  ‘She is dead,’ Sana agreed. There was no sympathy in her voice. ‘They are all dead. But we are alive.’

  Paul wished he had not let Hugo go. He wanted to run down to the beach and slaughter every man he found. He would set their ship on fire and burn them all alive, then scour the globe to find every one of their families and kill them, too. But what could one man do? Hugo would be back aboard his ship by now. Paul could not even swim to get there.

  Sana’s hand closed around his. Her firm, cool touch seemed to draw the heat out of him. He began to tremble violently, his body convulsing with silent sobs.

  Sana’s grip stayed tight. Like a mother with a rebellious child, she pulled him away and led him out of the gate towards the river, while the last remnants of Fort Auspice collapsed and burned behind them.

  CALCUTTA, 1807

  I

  t was strange hearing English spoken again. Walking through Calcutta, listening to the men and women flirting and conversing, Adam realised how much of a stranger he had become to his own people during his time away. The buildings that had seemed so grand when he arrived now felt prim and starched. The people who drove past in their carriages, braying and preening, were a different species.

  Months had passed since the battle of Holkar. His wounds had healed and he walked easily. He was dressed as a sailor, in canvas trousers and a checked shirt which Cornish had provided, with a sailcloth bag hoisted over his shoulder. Adam kept a firm hand on the bag. Tucked inside were the two fragments of the Neptune sword, now safely retrieved.

  He was alone. After travelling hundreds of miles together, he and Panjit had parted ways at Benares, where the great trunk road met the Ganges.

  ‘Where will you go?’ Adam had asked.

  ‘There are parts of India that are still free of the Company’s rule. I will find a kingdom that has not yet been conquered and carry on the fight.’

  Adam had almost shaken Panjit’s hand, then remembered the caste rules and halted himself. But Panjit did not pull away. He had wrapped his arms around Adam and hugged him tight.

  ‘Whatever other people may think, the gods will not say I defile myself if I touch you. You bring nothing but honour.’

  Adam had embraced his friend, aware of the compliment he had been paid. When at last they separated, Panjit had taken a small leather bag from inside his coat and pressed it into Adam’s hand.

  ‘A souvenir of Holkar. Something to remember us by.’

  The bag was heavy, bulging with hard edges. When Adam peered inside, he saw the glitter of diamonds. He had pushed it back towards Panjit.

  ‘You have greater need than me.’

  ‘Consider it your reward for your services to Holkar. It is a long journey back to England, and you will have to pay your way. Besides . . .’ Panjit had unbuttoned his coat and opened the folds, revealing four more similar bags tied to his belt. ‘I have enough of my own.’

  ‘Then be careful who you share your fire with on the road. I will not be around to rescue you from the T’uggee next time.’

  ‘Careful?’ Panjit had laughed. ‘You bring danger like dung brings flies. I will be safer by far when you are gone from this country.’

  The words still brought a smile to Adam’s face, many weeks later. But there was also a harder truth in them. He was a fugitive and an outlaw. There were only two powers in Calcutta that could get him back to England – the Royal Navy and the East India Company – and he had made enemies of both. Nor could he assume a false name. Calcutta was an incestuous society; every white face was known the moment it arrived. To appear in Calcutta would bring down all manner of scrutiny. Even a common seaman would be noticed.

  He looked across the brown Hooghly river, at the fleet of Indiamen anchored in the stream, and wondered how he would ever get back home.

  NATIVITY BAY, 1803

  P

  aul gazed across the sparkling blue lagoon, at the Indiaman hoisting her anchor. The sky was clear; the sun shone. The day paid no respect to the horrors of the night before. The only clue was the thin column of smoke rising into the sky from the ashes of Fort Auspice.

  The Seven Sisters’ anchor broke the surface with a splash of white spray. Her crew raised it clear and made it fast to the cathead. Sails were set, and the ship nosed her way through the narrow channel that led out of the bay. Paul climbed the whale-backed hill and watched her go, until she was a speck on the horizon.

  When he was certain she would not return – when he could delay the moment no longer – he went to the beach and up the path that led to Fort Auspice. The dagger he had thrown at Hugo lay on the ground, trampled into the soft earth. He let it lie there.

  From the outside, all was well. The gate stood open as if in welcome. A few pockmarks gouged out of the white walls were the only clues to what had happened.

  As he stepped through the gate, the picture changed. Bodies littered the ground. It had only been twelve hours, but many had been stripped half-bare by the scavengers. A jackal looked up from one of them, its muzzle covered in blood. It gave Paul a piercing stare, then went back to its meal.

  He forced himself on, up the stairs and into the remains of the house. The embers were still warm; smouldering timbers burned the soles of his bare feet.

  He went to Mary’s room. He rifled through her clothes – dresses and petticoats she would never wear again. He buried his face in them, trying to breathe in her scent, but they only smelled of smoke.

  He found her paintbox under her bed and took it to what had been the living room. He meant to keep it as a memento, perhaps to paint a portrait to take with him. But when he tried to remember how she had been, the image he saw was a charred corpse.

  A wave of fury overtook him. He threw the box to the ground and smashed it. He picked up one of the paints, daubed it on his hands, and in frenzied letters wrote, ‘J’aura mon revanche.’ But when he read it back, the words only seemed to mock him, hollow and empty.

  He had to bury the Jansen family. He found Rachel in the living room where Hugo had killed her, and Susan in the doorway. She must have been shepherding Rachel and Mary out of the house; a bullet had killed her instantly. Gert was in the corridor. Flames had burned away the axe haft and much of his skin, but the axe-head remained buried in his skull. George, too, had been badly burned. Paul identified him by the missing tibia where his wooden leg had been, and the walking cane that lay under him. It had been cut in two; he must have died using it to defend himself.

  It took longer to find Marcus. Paul eventually dug him out from under a collapsed wall. The boy’s mouth was full of dust, and his fingertips were worn bloody and ragged from trying to claw his way from under the masonry before it crushed him. He had been buried alive.

  Last of all was Mary. Paul tied a strip of cloth over her face so he did not have to look at her.

  He found a spade in one of the farm buildings and began to dig near the back of the compound. The ground was hard; it took heavy effort to break the soil. Sana sat on a tree stump, her legs curled under her, munching a kei apple. Paul gestured to her to help, but she did not come. She had put on one of Mary’s dresses, a blue one that had been Mary’s favourite. It was too big for her. The neckband hung too far down her chest, and the hem dragged in the dirt when she walked. Paul wished she wasn’t wearing it.

  The Jansen family needed a big grave. By the time it was a foot deep, Paul was drenched with sweat and every muscle ached. He welcomed the pain.

  ‘It makes no difference,’ Sana called from her stump. ‘They are dead.’

  He knew she was right. What did he owe them? Even Susan, the kindest, had been wary of him; Gert and George had been openly hostile. But in these few weeks they had been the nearest people to family he had known since his mother died. More importantly, they were Mary’s family. He was doing this for her.

  At last he had made the hole deep enough. He laid out the bodies, then gathered rocks and rubble to cover them against scavengers. He mounded the earth over it. Lastly, he found flat stones to act as grave markers and scored the family’s initials into them, scratching the stone again and again until his hand was blistered from holding the knife. He set the stones at the heads of the graves, and laid wild flowers beside them.

  It wasn’t enough. He wanted to pray, like he had prayed when he was a child and still believed in a benevolent god – but his mind was blank. He could not remember the words.

  All the books in the living room had been destroyed by fire. But George’s office was in an older part of the house that had a brick-vaulted roof and a stout door. Hugo’s men had broken in – the lock on the strongbox had been smashed, and papers scattered around the room – but the fire had not taken hold. Much of the office was as George had left it: a pen stood upright in the inkstand; a ledger lay open on the desk. And on the shelves, among the account books and almanacs, there was an old Bible.

  It was a very old book. It was printed in Latin, but Paul thought he might remember enough of his schoolboy lessons to read it. He took it to the grave, rested it on a rock, and turned the pages until he found a psalm. The words fell into his memory like drops of water in a deep well.

  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil . . .

  He wished he could say the words aloud. He wished he could believe them. He said them in his head and hoped that they would serve.

  Wind rustled the pages and blew them back, exposing the inside front cover. The flyleaf was covered in writing – different inks and different hands and many different times, judging by how faded some of the letters were. Spidery lines connected the words.

  It was a family tree. Paul studied it. Near the bottom were the names he recognised: Mary, Marcus and Rachel; Gert and Susan above them; George above that. George’s parents had been called James and Louisa; James’s parents – very faded – Tom and Sarah.

  Tom had had three brothers: Dorian, Guy and William. All had married and had children, and those children had had children of their own, until the family tree had so many branches that someone had pasted in a second flap of paper to continue it. Paul read the names, wondering what stories lay behind them: Francis, Christopher, Gerard, Robert, Adam, Theo, Constance.

  He blinked. At the same time, his eye caught the heading written at the top of the page. The words were so old they had faded almost to the same brown as the paper, but under the bright African sun they became legible: The Courtney Family.

  Constance . . . Courtney. The same name he had seen written in the front of his mother’s childhood book. But surely that was impossible. It must be a coincidence – one more grim joke played by a fate that had tormented Paul all his life. The alternative . . .

  ‘What is it?’

  Sana had come up behind him, silent as usual. Paul pointed to the words on the page, but of course she could not read them. How could he tell her? Though she could read his face, the thoughts in his heart were so complex he could not explain them.

  She pushed the book closed. It had taken so long to dig the grave, the sun had dropped behind the trees. Shadows lengthened from the forest. Soon it would be dark, and the bodies in the house would draw out the carrion eaters again.

  ‘We do not want to be here when night falls.’

  Where else can we go?

  Standing over the graves, a new depth of despair opened inside him. The painful labour of digging had barricaded him off from it, but now grief and guilt overwhelmed his defences and crashed through.

  If Sana had not found him with Mary – if she had not fled out of the side gate and left it unlocked – the walls would not have been breached. The family would have held off the assault. Mary would be alive.

  It was all my fault.

  The thought was like a lion’s paw clawing at his soul, ripping it to ribbons. In a frenzy, he snatched up his knife. Its point was blunted from gouging the initials into the gravestones, but it only had one more stroke to make. He would plunge it into his heart.

  Forgive me, Mother.

  He raised the knife.

  A hand, small but strong, gripped his wrist. He wrestled against it, but he was exhausted, and Sana had a tenacious strength. She prised his fingers off the hilt, pulled the knife from his hand, and tossed it aside. Paul made to go after it, but she planted her feet and held him back, arms locked like wrestlers or dancers.